


Opaque Matter

by highfantastical



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: A Sentimental Journey, Books, Gen, JMG Le Clezio, Laurence Sterne, Rousseau, Sentimentalism, Squabbling about Literature, St Thomas More, Sublimated Desire For America, Tristram Shandy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-22
Updated: 2010-05-22
Packaged: 2017-10-09 15:45:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/89011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/highfantastical/pseuds/highfantastical
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is my France-reads-Sterne fic. In this fic, France reads Sterne. And then he and England have a friendly chat about literature.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Opaque Matter

'They order,' said I, 'this matter better in France.'  
-_A Sentimental Journey_

 

\--

 

France sits in a graceful attitude, beneath a cherry tree. Only his hand moves from time to time, turning the pages, for he is reading a book, bound in brown.

"What's that?" England says, flopping down on the grass. He rubs his eyes—it was a long meeting, America was intransigent and unfailingly cheerful. France does not answer, so England prods his knee. "If you won't tell me, I shall guess. Let's see. _Ourania_? You've always been attracted by improbable fancies about an ideal society."

"And who—" France begins, glancing up from the book, "Whose countryman coined the very _word_ for it?"

"We didn't publish the bloody thing, you know. Not for about forty years. He was dead, actually, by the time it was printed in England. And it's funny...not that I'd expect you to understand. Humour's not often remarked upon in your writers, is it?"

"I am reading," says France carefully, "A classic. A work in _English_, as it happens. Or I was reading it, until your unmannerly interruption—"

"I don't believe you," England says. "You lying bastard. You never read English books."

"I have always had an...affection for this one. It is very much to my taste—though my people didn't like it quite so much." England pounces, capturing the book and retreating to a safe distance, several feet away. France settles down on his back, and England, who is no longer beneath the shade of the tree, squints at the spine of the book to read its title, thinking irritably that France gets to keep the most comfortable position every time.

It is _Tristram Shandy._

"I loathe you," England says. "This is _mine_. From my house. There's a monogram."

"I borrowed it," France says. His voice is serene, as though he is entirely untroubled by being unmasked as a repellent book thief. "I seem to have lost my own copy."

"And I know why you like it!" England says. "You like it for one reason alone."

"Not only that, actually. I do like that. But he liked _me_, you know. For all the wars and mockery, he still liked me. And my people...especially the women, of course. Votre petit Yorick—"

"Stop it," England says roughly. The name sounds too silly in France's mouth. "I don't believe you understand the books at all."

"Oh, I do—I do! It's all mine...vous le savez bien. It begins with me. With _Héloïse_, that is—'un sentiment délicat et fin.' The distinguishing characteristic of your scribblers is that they borrow my ideas and contribute tremendous quantities of—les idées saugrenues. Whimsy, I believe you would say. It is a fault, that. But in him I will excuse it."

"I remember when he was so ill," England says. "Dying. Writing that awful journal, and he let me read some, the last time I saw him. It was like one of your salons, so many people coming in and out—and he coughed and coughed, with her picture frowning down at him. I didn't get to read the whole thing for years. And I don't believe she wrote to him at all. If she did, I never saw it."

"When did he die?" France says. "I have forgotten."

"It was 1768. Before the last book even came out—March, I think. The tail-end of winter. Of course if he'd lived much longer, I wouldn't have been able to go and see him, anyway." He frowns up at the bright sky: watches the cherry blossoms tremble in the breeze.

"The year they built the Petit Trianon," France says, to fill the gap.

"Yes", says England, in a stiff voice. He feels tired: it has been a terribly long day. He doesn't care now, even if France does snatch the book back, so he wriggles a bit nearer, back under the tree, and stretches out on the springy turf. Now he's out of the sun.

"I'm not really surprised that you like those books," he says. "They turn you on. That's why. You love the idea of strange women offering you a wrist to hold. You'd definitely get a frisson from pulse-feeling, wouldn't you?"

"I think you liked them well enough yourself, once," France says, "Your copy has been read, has it not? Do not pretend to me that you are acquainted only with the _Beauties_, mon cher."

"Of course I've read them," England says crossly. "But their time is past. I don't care for them much any more, and certainly not the way you do."

"Ah, but they move you. They touch your little heart," France says. "If I read aloud, you would decidedly cry. 'Thou shalt not leave me, Sylvio.' Do your eyes yet brim, Angleterre? I have a very fine handkerchief here, if you have need of it."

"_Thank you_, but I am not so very given to tears," says England. "I have a degree of self-restraint that you have never felt the need to cultivate."

There are many answers that France could make to that: most of them pleasingly cruel. He sits up, half-aware that petals are falling from the tree, and that they probably look very beautiful, as they tangle in his hair. He plucks the book easily from England's unresisting hand. "If you don't want it any more, I'll keep it," he says. He finds his page again, and to keep England quiet, he reads aloud, "There is neither mote, nor sand, nor dust, nor chaff, nor speck, nor particle of opaque matter floating in it.—There is nothing, my dear paternal uncle! but one lambent delicious fire, furtively shooting out from every part of it, in all directions, into thine.—"

 

\----

**Author's Note:**

>   
> This fic is, self-evidently, all about Laurence Sterne. The books in question are _Tristram Shandy_, _A Sentimental Journey_ and the _Journal to Eliza_. _The Beauties of Sterne_ was an edition of excerpts, containing all the most sentimental and "pathetick" passages from the novels, first published in 1782.
> 
> Sterne's Eliza was supposed to write a matching journal to him: if she ever did, it has been lost. There's no particular reason to think she didn't, though. England's projecting.
> 
> Other people to whom brief allusions are made are J. M. G. Le Clézio, St. Thomas More, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
> 
> It is quite important not to believe France when he attempts to take credit (or give the credit to Rousseau!) for eighteenth-century sentimentalism. Because actually loads of things precede _Héloïse_ (including the first few volumes of _Tristram_) in the sentimental stakes. He's just getting at England; it's not actually true.


End file.
